lf so magnificent as my throne.
If you like, you may sit down on it, and be my little queen, and I will
sit on the footstool."

"I don't care for golden palaces and thrones," sobbed Proserpina. "Oh,
my mother, my mother! Carry me back to my mother!"

But King Pluto, as he called himself, only shouted to his steeds to go
faster.

"Pray do not be foolish, Proserpina," said he, in rather a sullen tone.
"I offer you my palace and my crown, and all the riches that are under
the earth; and you treat me as if I were doing you an injury. The one
thing which my palace needs is a merry little maid, to run upstairs and
down, and cheer up the rooms with her smile. And this is what you must
do for King Pluto."

"Never!" answered Proserpina, looking as miserable as she could. "I
shall never smile again till you set me down at my mother's door."

But she might just as well have talked to the wind that whistled
past them, for Pluto urged on his horses, and went faster than ever.
Proserpina continued to cry out, and screamed so long and so loudly that
her poor little voice was almost screamed away; and when it was nothing
but a whisper, she happened to cast her eyes over a great broad field
of waving grain--and whom do you think she saw? Who, but Mother Ceres,
making the corn grow, and too busy to notice the golden chariot as it
went rattling along. The child mustered all her strength, and gave one
more scream, but was out of sight before Ceres had time to turn her
head.

King Pluto had taken a road which now began to grow excessively gloomy.
It was bordered on each side with rocks and precipices, between which
the rumbling of the chariot wheels was reverberated with a noise like
rolling thunder. The trees and bushes that grew in the crevices of the
rocks had very dismal foliage; and by and by, although it was hardly
noon, the air became obscured with a gray twilight. The black horses had
rushed along so swiftly, that they were already beyond the limits of the
sunshine. But the duskier it grew, the more did Pluto's visage assume
an air of satisfaction. After all, he was not an ill-looking person,
especially when he left off twisting his features into a smile that did
not belong to them. Proserpina peeped at his face through the gathering
dusk, and hoped that he might not be so very wicked as she at first
thought him.

"Ah, this twilight is truly refreshing," said King Pluto, "after being
so tormented with that ugly and impertin